


If You're The Lucky One

by kawada_s



Category: Battle Royale - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9297131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawada_s/pseuds/kawada_s
Summary: Mitsuko wants to get away and Noriko needs a ride to anywhere. A decision to take a road trip is made, and both of them discover things that they never expected to find. It's a trip neither of them could ever now imagine ever having taken alone. Modern AU/No Program.





	

If You're The Lucky One

Noriko wonders if she should go back. It isn’t too late. It’s around midnight, no one would be awake yet. She could take the note off her desk, burn it, put the urn back on the mantelpiece and crawl into bed, then get up tomorrow and get on as normal, like she never ended up out here in the first place. It’d be so easy. If only she could just get herself to turn around.

She can’t go home, she knows that. Home is suffocating and school is suffocating and her family is suffocating and so are her friends. She’s felt like she’s been drowning for months now, and it was time to try and get back up again. Also, her mother deserves better than to be left on a mantelpiece until the end of time just because her father can’t bring himself to do anything with it. More than anything, she needs to do this for her.

It’s a bad idea to hitchhike, but she’s standing on the side of the road anyway. Taking a bus or a train just sent anxiety shooting through her stomach, as if going on one would automatically plaster the words ‘I’m running away’ on her forehead in large red letters. She decides to hope for the best. _I’m almost eighteen,_ she tells herself. _I can do this._

No car stops for a long time, so she moves a little further down the side of the road, hoping for the best. There aren’t a lot of cars around at this time of night, and it seems like with every ten minutes that pass, there’s even less around. Noriko wonders if it’s a sign that she should go back, but she just grips her bag tighter and tells herself that it’ll be fine.

After what feels like forever, a car finally stops. The bright headlights make her eyes ache and she’s never been more nervous, but she hopes for the best. She slowly walks up to the driver’s window as they roll it down, and a pair of dark brown eyes meet her own. While she hasn’t seen them in about three years, she’d know them anywhere.

Mitsuko Souma looks back at her, cigarette in hand, trying to hide her surprise. Noriko doesn’t bother to hide her own.

This isn’t the girl she remembers, that she used to push down the stairs and snap at, an easy target that she went back to again and again. Dark circles are under her eyes and her clothes are wrinkled and usually well-kept hair messy, as if she left the house without even looking in the mirror. What puzzles her the most is the bag slung across one of her shoulders and the suitcase she’s holding onto for dear life.

_She’s running away as well._

“Get in, Nakagawa,” Mitsuko mutters before she can stop herself. She taps her cigarette and lets ash fall onto the ground as she thinks about the rash decision she’s just made, and how she can’t take it back now. It’s the least risky rash decision she’s ever made, though.

Noriko gets in the car, the scent of perfume and cigarettes greeting her. She tries not to cough as she places her bag and suitcase on the backseat, but can’t stop herself from sighing in relief when Mitsuko puts out her cigarette and starts to drive. She doesn’t know what to say. What _do_ you say to the person who bullied you for three years straight and you just started to forget?

“Thanks,” eventually tumbles out of Noriko’s mouth. She looks out the window, staring at the few lights that are still on in the distance.

“Where were you planning on going?” Mitsuko asks, never acknowledging her ‘thank you.’ Noriko thinks for a moment, a picture of the urn in her bag floating through her mind, but she draws a blank. There’s nowhere in the world that seems perfect, but she wants to find somewhere that’s close enough.

“Anywhere,” Noriko eventually settles on, shrugging her shoulders. When she looks over at Mitsuko she swears that she sees a small smile cross her lips, but she tells herself that she’s just seeing things.

“That’s where I’m heading too,” Mitsuko says. It’s quiet in the car again after that. Noriko drifts off to sleep, exhausted after spending the whole day worrying about this moment, and getting this far in the first place.

Mitsuko lets her sleep, continuing to drive through the night. She wants to get as far away as she can from their hometown tonight. It’ll make it easier. She still doesn’t get why Noriko would want to run away, or what she’d even be running _from_ , if anything, but she feels as if she made the right decision picking her up, even if she’s still regretting it in the back of her mind. She knows the type of people that are around, especially at this time of night. They’d eat her alive.

She takes another cigarette and lights it. She should quit. It’ll only make things worse, but in her mind, there’s no real point. There’s only about four months left, six if she’s particularly lucky, but she’s never been the lucky one and she figures life won’t be sending any luck her way at this point. Why make such a difficult change if the end result will be the same?

As soon as she found out last week, the idea to run was planted in her mind. The initial plan was just to stay on the road for these last months and try to find one good thing out there in the world, if there’s any, but now that Nakagawa has tagged along, she has no idea what’ll happen, or where they’ll end up. Even though it’s painfully obvious that she did this spontaneously, there was something in her eyes that she couldn’t ignore when she picked her up. She has some plan in mind, but doesn’t want to share it just yet.

Mitsuko understands this, though. She isn’t planning to share her own news with Noriko. Even though she made her and her friend’s lives hell for three whole years, she wouldn’t be the type to say this was coming for her all along. She’d feel _bad_ for her, and that hurts the most.

 

They stop somewhere to stretch their legs in the morning, and get some breakfast at the same time. It’s not what either of them would eat for breakfast normally, some greasy rolled-up thing filled with bacon, eggs and some stuff that they can’t identify, but it does for now, and it’s cheap. They eat in silence in a park close to Mitsuko’s car, both of them considering speaking, but aren’t too sure what to say yet.

It’s been three years, and it wasn’t as if any of their previous interactions were nice, after all.

“Where are you think of heading today?” Noriko asks eventually, unable to stand the silence anymore. She had so many thoughts about what this day would be like, some positive, a majority negative, but none of them involved anything like this. She isn’t sure what she’d classify this as.

“No idea. That’s the point, right?” Mitsuko replies in an effort to stop her mind wandering. She wonders how long she can keep doing this, how long she’ll keep feeling okay for before it all crumbles. As soon as she left the doctor’s she told herself she had accepted the fact that the end was coming, and she wants to keep it that way.

Noriko is quiet for quite awhile after that, her own mind wandering. She looks back at the car and thinks of the bag with the urn inside, followed by a picture of her mother being painted in her head. It’s such a stupid thing to bring up, especially to a girl that has never cared about her and never will, but she needs to let it out to someone whose worst reaction would be remaining indifferent, rather than yelling at her like her father.

Mitsuko won’t keep her around for long anyway, she figures. It’ll be forgotten quickly.

“I… I…” Noriko stumbles as soon as she starts speaking, “I came out here for a reason, I guess. I want to do something with my mother’s ashes. She… she died last year, and my dad still refuses to do anything with them. I wanted to try and find somewhere out there, where she might be at peace…”

“That’s the corniest thing I’ve heard in a long time,” Mitsuko says. She’s a hypocrite – the dying person running away for one last hurrah isn’t exactly the most original thing in the world ever either.

Surprisingly, Noriko’s face doesn’t fall, like it used to when Mitsuko would trade clearly audible insults about her poems with her friends back in junior high. Her lips stretch into a smile, and she actually laughs. For a moment, she wonders if Noriko’s lost it since they last met.

“I know,” Noriko says, “but I need to do it.”

The wheels start turning in Mitsuko’s mind, which most of the time, isn’t a good thing, but rising up from the cluttered, rather depressing mess that is her brain comes an idea that she actually thinks is good. Rather stupid, but good. She came out here to find one good thing in the world in her final months of life, and this may give her the opportunity to find it. It’d be easier to forget about what will inevitably happen than if she went at it alone.

“Well, if you want to do something corny, you may as well go all the way,” Mitsuko shrugs, Noriko turned to her with a look of confusion on her face. “We could do the full dumb road trip. Go out there, anywhere, stop at places every now and then and just go wherever feels right, until you find that place that seems right for your mother.”

Noriko takes in her words, unable to believe what she’s hearing for quite awhile. _Mitsuko Souma_ just suggested they go on a road trip together? Something has to be wrong, or it has to be some bizarre, elaborate joke, but she still finds herself nodding at her. As weird as it is, sitting in this park, eating awful food and having no idea where she’s going to head next, she’s felt as if she can breathe again, and staying away for an undecided period of time might just be what she needs.

Her brother and her father come to mind for a moment – they would have found the note by now. Running away is a selfish thing to do, but she was so busy trying to prop everyone else up when her mother died that she took no time to really think about herself. As a result, she almost suffocated. When she comes back, she’ll explain this to them, and hopefully they’ll understand.

“Let’s do it, then,” Mitsuko shrugs, still not fully sure why she suggested this. “But we won’t act like tourists. We’ll find all the small places, that people forget about. “

Noriko nods, and reminds herself to get her notebook out of her bag before they head off again. She’s already getting some ideas for new poems. She hasn’t written one in five months.

 

Their first few days officially on a road trip are okay. They manage, but there’s a few fights, which is to be expected. Mitsuko drives as she lights another cigarette, Noriko anxiously looking up from her notebook to make sure she’s keeping her eyes on the road. She hasn’t stopped scribbling in the book since the morning in the park. All of her ideas that had been locked up tightly as she struggled to keep going are finally free, and riding along on the way to nowhere in particular seems to be the perfect writing backdrop.

On their fifth day together, as Mitsuko opens a new pack of cigarettes instead of paying attention to the road, the question Noriko should have thought of ages ago comes to mind.

“Wait,” Noriko frowns, “you’re the same age as me… how are you already able to drive?”

Mitsuko just laughs, fumbling around in her pocket for a moment. Noriko bites her lip hard, hoping that she’ll at least keep her eyes on the road, and takes the piece of plastic from her hand. She breathes in a sigh of relief once both of her hands on the steering wheel, then looks down at the piece of plastic. It looks exactly like a legitimate driver’s licence, except Mitsuko’s age and name is different.

“How did you manage _this_?” Noriko asks, examining the licence again. She remembers back in junior high, everyone would say that Mitsuko always gets what she wants, but this really seems like a stretch.

“That’s not a story I want to tell,” Mitsuko simply replies. It wasn’t one of her best moments.

Noriko nods, giving back the licence. She doesn’t know what else she expected. As she picks up her pen, she wonders if Mitsuko stole this car, but tries to tell herself not to think that way. It’ll be fine, she thinks to herself, but she still can’t stop herself from worrying. Even though she hasn’t said another word, Mitsuko can still pick up on her anxiety, and just rolls her eyes.

“Oh, and shut up about the car. I can sense your useless worrying from here,” Mitsuko mutters. “It’s not a story I want to tell either.”

The car is quiet again after that. Neither of them bother to turn on the radio, finding it more of a disruption than a comfort on the open road. Noriko scribbles down poems, her usually neat writing messy due to the occasional jerks of the car and the rush to get all the words she’s bottled up inside out as fast as she can, her bag lying at her feet. Mitsuko drives, lost in her thoughts, wondering how long she’ll be able to stay on the road before her body gives up on her.

She tries not to think of those things. She is going to die, whether she likes it or not, and accepting it as soon as she can seems like the best option. Nothing will change what’s going to come. She can only try and use the time she has left the best she can.

A loud thump pulls her out of her thoughts, and she glances over to see Noriko picking up her bag. She’s dropped the urn that she insists on keeping on her bag – something about closeness or something.

“I swear, Nakagawa, if that was the sound of your mother’s ashes scattering all over my car, she won’t be the only one who’s dead.”

Noriko smiles sheepishly, grateful that the urn is still fully intact, and then gently places it back into her bag, assuring Mitsuko that no harm has been done to the possibly stolen vehicle.

 

They don’t do much during the first two and a half weeks. They stop at a few places with some nice scenery, Noriko takes pictures and stretches her legs, Mitsuko smokes and takes in the view, then they’re off again, until they get hungry or she runs out of cigarettes. So far, besides money for petrol and the few nights they checked into a motel instead of sleeping in the car, they haven’t made much of dent in their money at all.

Noriko still remembers the look on her face when Mitsuko brought out the box. They’d just stopped for breakfast on the first day, in the park, and Noriko had insisted she’d pay. Mitsuko had just rolled her eyes, shook her head, and opened up the boot of the car. Under Noriko’s suitcase, her bag and Mitsuko’s own belongings was a toolbox. With careful fingers, Mitsuko had unlocked it, revealing the old, rusty box was in fact filled with more money than Noriko had ever seen before, even including on television shows.

“No, I didn’t rob a bank,” Mitsuko had muttered upon seeing Noriko’s expression. “I’ve just done a lot of saving over the years.” She still hadn’t acquired most of the money legally, but it had taken a long time to get her here. She’d figured that one day, she’d use it to buy an apartment somewhere and attempt to sort her shit out, but since that would now never happen, she figured she’d just bring it along.

Mitsuko insists that Noriko won’t pay for anything, and as they leave the hole in the wall place where they had dinner, it isn’t any different. She doesn’t really mind doing it, and it isn’t like she has any big plans for the money anymore. Noriko isn’t the worst person to spend money on at all. Even though it’s obvious she’s hurting, over her mother’s death, over running away, over the constant calls from her father that she doesn’t pick up, she doesn’t complain. She smiles and tells happy stories, reads her some of her poems, hides the ones she’s too afraid to share, and Mitsuko doesn’t have any insults for them at all anymore.

She’s so glad that she isn’t alone, but at the same time, she hates having Noriko around too. She’s already getting somewhat attached to her, she observes. Every time she turns, she expects her to be there, to be around to talk to, to smile with, to read something to, and it only makes her feel more unsure about whether or not she’s accepted the fact that she won’t be here this time next year.

She hesitates before starting the car, figuring they have time to get into the next town before it gets too dark and they decide to stop for the night. Noriko quietly thanks her for the meal and shoots a smile in her direction, and she can’t help but return it. The right thing to do would be to tell her, even though she was never planning to. It’ll be easier if she tells her before she gets completely used to her being around and before she starts to really decline.

It’ll be coming. She hates herself for it, but when Noriko was at a park taking photos yesterday, she snuck over to the public library and began to search around for what’s going to happen to her. She’s already paranoid that she’s started losing weight as the websites have predicted. She tries to take notes on how her clothes fit every day, noticing even the slightest change. It’s stupid. She accepted this before she came on this trip, and that shouldn’t be changing just because Noriko’s here.

It’s just five words. _Noriko, I’m going to die,_ but she can’t say them. Upon her hesitation, Noriko asks if she’s okay, not used to her taking her time like this, and Mitsuko just nods – the biggest fucking lie she’s told all trip – and starts the car. Noriko can still sense something’s wrong, but doesn’t comment. She doesn’t want to push her, not that she can really be pushed.

Noriko takes a look out the window, letting the motions of the car lull her. The sun has set so she can’t write anymore, but her ideas continue to pile up in her mind. They spent the majority of the day walking around town, trying too figure out the favourite spots of the locals and the town’s hidden gems, and now, she’s exhausted. Just as she’s going to close her eyes, a lit up sign coming up captures her attention.

“There’s a fair on tonight,” Noriko says, suddenly wide awake again. “Can we go?”

“I thought we decided we were gonna stay away from the tourist spots,” Mitsuko says, thinking of bright lights and crowds. She’s exaggerating, she knows that, as this town is basically dead, but hopefully Noriko can’t see through her.

“It’s a _fair_ , and this place is close to being a ghost town,” Noriko reasons, hoping she won’t take it as being pushy. “Can we go? Please? I think it’ll be fun. Something to remember.”

Noriko’s last words stick in Mitsuko’s head for awhile. She hasn’t had a lot of good memories to look back on in her just barely eighteen years, and it’s better late than never to start making some. After a little more thought, she nods, and then they’re off.

 

The fair is obviously the most lively place in town. Music blares from speakers and bright lights sparkle, and the atmosphere is infectious to Noriko – she can’t help but smile. They can get around with ease, as even though the fair is some sort of hotspot in the town, it definitely isn’t anywhere near crowded. Mitsuko humours Noriko and goes on a few rides with her, watches her take some pictures, and reluctantly drags around a giant bear that Noriko managed to win at one of the carnival games.

She feels like an idiot, and knows that there’s no doubt that Hirono would be laughing so hard if she saw her now, walking around with _Noriko Nakagawa_ at a fucking _fair_ , carrying a stuffed bear and eating her second stick of cotton candy, but at the same time, she likes it. No one knows them here. They could be just about anyone, and no one else would be none the wiser.

If only she could have this fresh start for longer. These thoughts always come now, just as she’s starting to feel happy, as if to remind her yet again that all this has an expiration date. _As if things haven’t fucking sucked enough for me already._

“I’ve never been to a fair before,” Mitsuko says, trying to push the thoughts in her head away for another day. Absentmindedly, she twirls her cotton candy stick around in her hands, trying to make herself make it last longer.

Noriko is looking at her as if she has suddenly grown an extra pair of limbs.

“What?” Mitsuko asks, but it’s gently, surprising Noriko, as most questions from Mitsuko she’s received have always been snapped at her. She tears another piece of cotton candy off with her teeth, unable to help herself, and feels it disintegrate in her mouth. Her head is buzzing from all the sugar she’s had, but it’s actually kind of pleasant instead of sickening.

“You’ve never been to a fair?” Noriko asks her quietly, embarrassed by her earlier overreaction.

Mitsuko nods, and can’t help but give her a look that screams, _‘that’s what I just said, idiot.’_ Noriko’s cheeks turn pink, this fact made more prominent by the bright lights that fill the fair, and she ducks her head down under the guise of taking another bite of cotton candy. For a moment, Mitsuko wonders if she should mumble an apology, but Noriko’s words fill her ears and everything seems as fine as it can be at the moment.

“S-sorry, I guess I was just a little surprised,” Noriko says to her, willing herself to meet her eyes again as they walk. There’s something… off about them that she can’t pinpoint, but she knows it probably isn’t her place to ask. “Shiroiwa has a fair every year. My parents took me every year, starting from when I was a year old. It was just a time to be together, y’know, even more so when my brother came along.”

Mitsuko nods along, and even smiles a little. What would it have been like to grow up like Noriko did? She shouldn’t dwell on the what ifs. She thought she stopped doing that a long time ago, but they creep up on her every now and then.

“Sounds nice,” Mitsuko shrugs, not sure what else to say. She’s never been good with words, and lately at times, it’s gotten harder, like she has to wade through molasses to get to the words she wants to use. It’s painfully frustrating, but will only get worse.

“You must have gone at least once in your life, everyone does,” Noriko says with a genuine smile Mitsuko is sure she doesn’t deserve plastered across her face, ever the optimistic one. “Maybe when you were young, with your mother and father-“

“We had very different childhoods, Noriko,” Mitsuko simply says, and it’s all Noriko needs to understand. She gives her a nod and doesn’t say anything else.

Mitsuko looks down at the ground, and for a moment, sees Noriko’s hand heading towards her own. It stops suddenly and returns to the side of her white and pink dress, as if she caught herself doing something she wasn’t supposed to. She pretends not to notice.

 

When Noriko goes out to take a few pictures of the town at night, Mitsuko takes the incentive to attempt to cook for the two of them. They picked up some nice stuff they found at a market at a previous town a few days ago, and they may as well use it before it spoils. Noriko probably had something in mind, but she’ll be hungry when she gets back, and Mitsuko wants to try and do something else for her. She wants to make herself feel a little more useful.

Their motel room has a tiny kitchen, with most of the burners not working and the majority of the appliances missing. She manages to get something going, though, and rifles through her brain for the recipe that has basically helped keep her alive for years now. She tries to make it perfect, but cooking has never been one of her strong points.

Just as the door opens and Noriko comes inside again, Mitsuko places two plates filled with a mostly blackened monstrosity on the table. She’s ashamed that this all she can give her, when she’s made her so happy already on this trip and given her memories she can look back on without despising herself or wanting to scream as loud as she possibly can and destroy everything in her path. Noriko deserves better.

“You made us dinner?” If Noriko is disgusted, she is hiding it rather well. “T-thank you, Souma..” She doubts that Mitsuko has done this often, judging by how burnt the dish is, but she wouldn’t dare say anything. She tried, and she’s going to be grateful.

Mitsuko leans against the counter, watching as Noriko sits down and moves the plate slightly closer to her. She gently brushes off some of the blackened pieces and then takes a bite, then returns for another. Mitsuko wonders if she’s doing it out of pity, but decides Noriko wouldn’t be the type to do that, and joins her at the table and starts to eat when she tells her to come over and sit down.

“Thank you again, Souma,” Noriko smiles at her once they’re finished. Mitsuko takes a sip of water, trying to ignore the heaviness that’s filling her head – she’s starting to get tired easier now, but she’s trying to deny it, and just shakes her head.

“No need to thank me, it was pretty much shit,” Mitsuko scoffs, “and please, just call me Mitsuko from now on.”

Noriko obliges.

 

It’s pouring outside, definitely not the right weather for exploring towns or stopping to take photos, so they spend almost the entire day in the car. The only sound comes from the rain pouring outside and the scribbling of Noriko’s pencil on paper, but the latter ceases after several hours, her wrist sore and wanting to take a break. Mitsuko is distant again, lost in her thoughts, and she doesn’t know how to reach her. She tries to put it down to her just concentrating hard on the road for once – it is raining pretty hard outside, and she hasn’t fumbled around for a cigarette once, but can sense something lingering around under the surface that she isn’t sure she wants to try and touch.

She thinks back to what Mitsuko said during those first days on the road, what feels like a lifetime ago, but really only almost two months have passed since then. They’ve become closer, but it still feels like there’s some sort of invisible barrier keeping Noriko out from who she really is – something that she’s trying to respect, but curiosity still lingers.

How is it that she wants to know everything about this girl, that she wants to spend every minute with her, when the last time they saw each other every day she was always worried about what she was planning to do next?

Mitsuko has changed since then, though. Her anger isn’t as open anymore, it seems, but is simmering under the surface, and she’s quieter than she once was too. She’s done some growing up and doesn’t find any pleasure in making people miserable anymore – it’s just something to do to pass time if the opportunity arises. Her appearance has changed too, Noriko has noticed, as superficial as it is. She seems thinner, her cheeks starting to sink in and her clothes looser. She doesn’t get it. She’s eating the same as Noriko is, and has been since the start of the trip, but she knows that’s something she can’t exactly ask.

It isn’t any of her business anyway. What were those words again?

 _That’s not a story I want to tell._ She doesn’t want to pry, not wanting Mitsuko to get mad at her or have her feel like she’s pushing her, especially not after they just began to connect, but she’s started talking already and can’t just suddenly stop now.

“Hey, Mitsuko?” Noriko looks over at her slowly. She doesn’t return her gaze, but Noriko is more relieved than anything. She’s gotten a little less reckless with her driving lately, actually.

“Yeah?” Mitsuko says casually, waiting for whatever will come next. She isn’t wondering what annoying thing will come out of her mouth now like she used to, but is instead grateful that her voice is filling the growing silence.

“Are there any stories about yourself that you’d be willing to tell me about yourself… well, you know, if you’re okay with it?” Noriko’s stumbling, which doesn’t happen often. She’s good at putting words on paper and choosing the right ones to come out. Mitsuko hides her amusement.

“I think you’d be rather bored if I did tell you any,” Mitsuko reaches for her first cigarette since they left their motel this morning. It seems safer to do so now that the rain’s lightening up, and she doesn’t have to focus as much.

“Why?” Noriko asks, hoping she hasn’t overstepped whatever boundaries Mitsuko has set up between them. To her relief, Mitsuko shoots her a small, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile, and she wonders if that’s it.

“Because, all the stories that I’d be bothered tell you are stories you’ve already experienced with me.”

Pink spreads through Noriko’s cheeks and she’s more grateful than ever that Mitsuko has kept her eyes glued on the road.

 

Mitsuko doesn’t find out about it being Noriko’s birthday until the actual day. She wakes up in the morning, trying to ignore the pain in her joints, to find Noriko hunched over her phone, reading the birthday message her father sent aloud to herself, thinking she was alone. While it hurts her, she decides not to reply, figuring that it would do more harm than good. She’ll come home when she’s ready, and hopefully he and her brother will understand.

“You didn’t tell me it was going your birthday soon,” Mitsuko says with a frown, pulling herself out of bed. She continues to ignore the pain in her kneecaps, figuring that it’ll eventually go away. Noriko blushes and ducks her head down, not wanting to admit that she didn’t mention it as she figured Mitsuko wouldn’t really care.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to make some more spontaneous plans again,” Noriko says with a soft smile, and Mitsuko can’t help but return it.

They both get ready to go out and face the day, then go out to look around town. They find a tiny place wedged in between two flower shops and have breakfast there, Mitsuko already starting to think of how she can make this birthday as good as she can for her. Her own birthday was the day she got the news, and she doesn’t want to think of it on a day like this. If she can make Noriko as happy as possible, it will help her forget for awhile.

After they eat, they continue to walk around, until they find what Mitsuko considers gold when putting Noriko’s interests first – a stationary shop. She leans against the wall while Noriko looks around, bored out of her mind, but trying not to show it. She watches as she picks up a leather bound notebook and gently runs her hands over the cover, flipping through the pages. When she sees the price, she puts it back, then steps away to look at something else.

When Noriko comes up to her after about an hour and a half of searching, her eyes are closed, and she’s almost fallen asleep. She gets tired at odd times now, sometimes ready to go back to sleep within fifteen minutes of getting up, but then it just goes away until later, when it comes back to hit her in full force. She hears Noriko’s footsteps and opens her eyes, giving her a smile to hopefully deflect any questions brewing in her mind about anything being wrong.

“So, what would you like?” Mitsuko asks her, getting to her feet slowly. She knows that it will eventually be near impossible to hide this from Noriko, but for now, she’s going to try. She can’t ruin her birthday.

“You don’t have to get my anything,” Noriko stutters, thinking of the price tags. Mitsuko just shakes her head.

“It’s your _eighteenth birthday,_ it’s usually the special one,” Mitsuko says with a sigh. “I’m getting you something. It’ll be easier if you show me what you want.”

Noriko’s cheeks flush pink, as they usually do around the other girl these days, and she slowly leads Mitsuko over to the leather bound notebook she’d picked up a few minutes after they’d come in, her favourite thing overall. She picks out a new set of pens with intricate designs on them to go with it, and shyly hands them to her. She doesn’t want to be any trouble – she’s already been enough of a bother, she thinks, and Mitsuko has spent enough money on her already, but she insists on buying her a birthday present, no matter what Noriko says or thinks.

Mitsuko hands the paper bag to Noriko, mumbling a ‘happy birthday’ to her, and she can’t help but smile. She’s almost filled up the notebook that she brought with her, it already half full before she left from the years past, and it would make the inevitable trip home a little lonely with nothing to write in. She writes her first poem in it when they take a break later in the day, stopping at a nice lakeside view just outside town, taking small glances at the girl who sits a little while away lighting a cigarette, trying to figure out how she can perfectly put her features and how much she means to her in words.

She can’t help herself blushing as she writes it, and decides she’s going to keep this poem to herself. Mitsuko would probably say that it was lame, anyway.

It’s the best birthday Noriko has had in awhile. Her last two were rather lonely, with her mother being taken to hospital on her sixteenth and the house still in utter shock and at a standstill on her seventeenth. Guilt fills her stomach everytime her father calls her, just wanting to talk to his daughter on one of her most important birthdays. She still doesn’t pick up, stuffing her phone in the bottom of her bag, and instead takes Mitsuko’s hand, unable to stop herself anymore.

She wonders what she’s done for a minute, if she’s just completely ruined things between them, but Mitsuko doesn’t seem to be protesting. She squeezes her hand gently and moves slightly closer to Noriko, not minding it much. In fact, she’d wanted to do it since the night at the fair when she noticed Noriko moving to do it, but had never made the move.

They decide to make their way back to town for Noriko’s birthday, spend another night in the motel and move on to whatever awaits them next in the morning. Not wanting Noriko to cook on her birthday or give her another one of her burnt disasters, they go out somewhere, a hole in the wall ramen place that is actually pretty good, that would probably be popular if they bothered to do more cleaning and update the furniture and décor. Noriko makes a note of the name of the place in her back of her notebook. She wants to document the whole trip when she gets home, maybe even do it again one day, take her brother and her father with her out on the road.

She already has a nice collection of pictures. Mitsuko actually let her take a few pictures of her today, instead of her having to try and sneakily point a camera at her when she wasn’t looking. She wonders if she did it just because of her birthday, but Mitsuko has other reasons.

“Thank you for today,” Noriko smiles, moving closer to her slightly in an effort to get out of the rain that’s just started to come down. “It was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had.”

“It’s not over yet,” Mitsuko shrugs. “You still haven’t had cake. Everyone has cake on their birthdays, right?”

Noriko nods, but then quickly tells her that it’s okay, that they can skip it and she won’t mind, but Mitsuko declares that nonsense and steps into the first bakery they find. It doesn’t look like the nicest place and she knows Noriko deserves the best, but she doubts the town has another one and she _must_ have some sort of cake before the day is over.

She fishes out some cash to pay for the largest cupcake they have, with pastel pink frosting on the top, Noriko’s favourite colour. After she buys a candle to go with it, they go sit on a bench, not caring about the weather, and Mitsuko sticks the candle in the cupcake and attempts to light it. With the rain, it’s futile.

“Hey, it’s fine,” Noriko smiles. She gently pulls the candle out and takes a bite of the cupcake. The frosting is too sweet and the cake tastes a little weird, but she doesn’t mind at all, breaking it in half to share it with the other girl.

They eat in silence, the rain starting to ease off a little rather than get heavier. As Noriko waits for Mitsuko to finish eating, she reaches for her spare hand and gently strokes her fingers, thinking of the last thing that she wants for her birthday, that she didn’t even know that she wanted until several minutes ago. She isn’t sure if she has the courage to do it, but when she makes herself look up at her again after she suggests they get back to the motel, she knows it’s the right thing to do.

Her lips still taste like the too-sweet frosting and the feeling of her cheek against her fingertips is one of the softest, nicest things in the world.

 

After Noriko’s birthday, it’s obvious something has changed between them. It’s a good thing, though.

More than ever, they’re there for one another. They hold each other’s hands as they walk together, under the table when they go out to eat, exchange kisses before they get going on the road again, as they take in the view in front of them, and Noriko is always around when Mitsuko wakes up in the middle of the night from dreams so horrible that she’d never want to speak of them out loud. Neither of them knew until this moment that is was what they needed.

Noriko doesn’t exactly know what they are yet, and is too afraid to spoil a perfect moment. They’re both happy, but there’s something deep inside Mitsuko’s heart that can’t make her feel the same level of pure happiness as she can. She feels like a liar, a fake, and she can’t go and commit to something she knows will end, even though she doesn’t want it to.

 

She has known for awhile in the back of her mind that the pain has been there, but it sneaks up on her all the same.

One day, it seemed to be fine, but then suddenly, in the next, her knees hurt so much that she has to pull up on the side of the road and sit there for an hour before she can get going again. It happens the next day, too, and the day after that she can’t get to sleep until three in the morning because her sides have started to hurt so bad that at times, breathing even seems too much.

Noriko notices this, and eventually has to ask if she’s okay, to which Mitsuko always replies with a ‘yes,’ as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world that she’s fine. She’s tried to push through it and get on with her day as much as she possibly can, but at times, it’s impossible to hide. She hates feeling weak, and it doesn’t help that she knows things are only going to get worse.

She takes another cigarette from the pack and lights it, needing something else to focus on. The pain is catching up with her, but she manages to keep driving for several hours before she needs to stop again. Noriko sits down on the grass outside, taking some photographs and scribbling in her new leather notebook, and Mitsuko watches with a tired smile.

How had she hated her for so long?

Being in love with Noriko is an amazing feeling, but she’s never going to tell her that. It’ll only make it hurt even more if she says she loves her, and those words don’t come easy to her anyway. She should tell her soon, before her body truly begins to break down, but those words don’t come easy either.

For the meantime, she settles on wrapping her arms around Noriko’s waist and listening to her laugh, looking over her shoulder to read her latest work. This one must be a less personal one or she’s becoming more comfortable with her, as she doesn’t make any move to hide it from her at all.

When she’d set off on this trip, she was okay with what was in store for her. It wasn’t what she had envisioned her future to be, not that she thought it was going to be a bright one anyway. With Noriko around though, she realises that maybe, things could possibly have ended up a little brighter for her. Even though she tells herself constantly to get over it and that what’s happened with Noriko won’t change what will inevitably happen, she’s finding it harder to accept it now.

It’s only when Noriko asks if she’s okay that she realises she’s crying – the first time she’s actually cried in over a decade. She doesn’t know why she’s so stupid. She could cry forever and the end result would be the same.

“I’m fine,” Mitsuko mumbles, wipes her eyes roughly with the sleeve of her jacket, and then gets up. “Just something in the air, that’s all.”

Noriko sighs and follows her back to the car, wondering if she’ll ever stop telling her she’s fine when she’s obviously not. If only she could.

 

The motel room is completely dark, save for the glow of the television. They muted it ages ago in favour of talking amongst one another, but kept it on for the light it gives off, comfort of some sort . Mitsuko doesn’t do much talking – she wants to let Noriko speak, get to know her, knowing that she’s being selfish when she’s just going to keep her walls up in return. She can’t help herself. She wants to know this girl, even though she’s going to leave soon.

Everyone leaves. It only figures that when she finds someone she’s honestly sure wouldn’t just go and take everything from her in the process, she’s the one that’ll have to leave. Life is a bitch, and she feels angrier about this fact than ever. She manages to hide this well, better than her sickness. Still, once Noriko asks she’s fine and Mitsuko responds with a nod, she stays quiet and doesn’t push the issue further, so she must believe it to some degree.

“I’ve felt better on this trip than I have in months,” Noriko’s voice is shaky. She doesn’t talk about herself much or her own feelings, thinking of it as a waste of time or that she’s just complaining more than anything. Now that she’s left and doesn’t feel as if she has to prop up the whole world around her, her words come a little easier.

“I’m glad,” Mitsuko mumbles. She knows it isn’t enough, but she isn’t good at trying to comfort people on a good day, let alone on a day where her words just don’t want to cooperate with her and she can really feel things getting more difficult.

“Everyone needed me when my mother died, so much so that I never really got to think about what I thought of it all,” she says it as if everything is becoming so clear after a long time of living in a daze, “I felt like my head was going to explode. I couldn’t concentrate at school anymore… and I was just so angry. I kept on trying to talk to my dad about doing something with her ashes, to try and make myself move forward, but he’d just yell at me, and I ended up yelling right back. I just needed to leave and clear my head. I want him to understand…”

Mitsuko doesn’t know what to say, both because of the mess that she feels her brain is becoming and the fact that she’s never had to deal with these family problems. By the time she was seven, it was essentially an accepted fact that none of her family loved her, as plain, simple and obvious as the sky being blue. Eventually, it stopped hurting, and she’s now indifferent, but she carries it around all the same.

“If he gives a damn about you, he’ll understand,” Mitsuko eventually settles on, it the best she can come up with in her state. “I mean, he’s your father and he’s loved you all these years, right? Why shouldn’t he?”

“You are right,” Noriko nods, resting her head on her shoulder. “He still texts me and calls me almost every day asking me where I am and when I’ll be coming home. Complete silence would be a worry. It’s always been like that…. but enough about me. What about you, Mitsuko? Don’t you have someone back at home to go back to?”

“Nope,” she says, as clear as day. “Unless there’s something that I don’t know.”

Things aren’t like they were in junior high between her, Hirono and Yoshimi. Hirono and her talk, but rarely, and when they do, it often ends in an argument and they don’t talk again for months. After breaking up with Yoji towards the end of junior high, Yoshimi, surprising everyone, grew a backbone, told Mitsuko where she hoped she would go, and put all her effort into trying to make herself into a completely new person.

Mitsuko didn’t bother trying to terrorise her, even though at the time, she figured she should have. She was more surprised than anything about the fact she’d learned to stand up for herself.

“You have me here,” Noriko says, and while she knows it doesn’t fix how lonely Mitsuko has probably been for these past years, she hopes it provides some sort of comfort. If her dad, as he hopes, forgives her when she comes back eventually, she tells herself she’ll introduce him to Mitsuko. She’s sure he’d like her. She’s been making his daughter happy again for the first time in months – that’s a pretty good start.

“I do,” Mitsuko nods. “I can’t imagine coming on this trip alone now.”

“If only we could do this forever. Stay on the road, wake up every day and go to wherever feels right,” Noriko smiles, Mitsuko barely able to catch it with the faint light in the room. “I know we can’t, though. We’ll run out of money and my father and brother need me. You’ll be going home with me though… right?”

Mitsuko is no stranger to doing cruel things. She’s done so many awful things that she lost count years ago. Making a promise she is physically unable to keep to the only person who she has truly ever loved would be the worst thing yet. Instead, she kisses her forehead lightly and pulls Noriko closer, reaching out to turn off the television. It’s enough for now.

 

Slowly but surely, their progress on the road dwindles. Mitsuko would used to drive through a full night without any problems, but Noriko now finds them stopping at least once every hour and a half. She doesn’t get mad or lose her patience, and instead tries to look at the positives. They’ve stopped again now as the evening sweeps in, and once Noriko makes a comment that the sunset looks lovely, Mitsuko hauls herself up the hill in order for them to have a better view. She doesn’t give up easily.

“Thank you,” Noriko puts an arm around her, and while Mitsuko would usually protest, not wanting to be seen a weak, she accepts it. She knows that Noriko won’t think anything of the sort.

“No need to,” Mitsuko says, though she’s already dreading the trip back down the hill. These days, she doesn’t just know that she’s dying, she can clearly feel it too. It scares her more than anything ever has before.

“My mom would like this,” Noriko smiles sadly, gently raking her hands through Mitsuko’s hair. “We’d do things like this sometimes, go an an adventure for the day, and then come home a few hours before my father came home from work. When he was away, we’d spend the night somewhere. We watched a sunset like this once. I have pictures somewhere at home. Remind me to show you sometime.”

Mitsuko’s head is limp against her shoulder. She can’t remember ever being this tired, but she manages a small smile. If only she’d been able to make the type of memories Noriko has made in her life so far sooner.

“Do you think it’s time?” Mitsuko mumbles. She could be louder, but she doesn’t want to croak. She thinks of the urn in Noriko’s bag, how it’s been there for three months now, waiting to find the right home.

“It’ll be hard to find another place like this but… no,” Noriko says softly. “I’m not ready to let go of her yet.”

Mitsuko understands. That’s exactly how she feels about Noriko, but no one’s going to be around letting her wait. She gives her a nod and lets Noriko pulls her in for a small, short kiss, trying to put most of her remaining energy into it.

 

When they’re three weeks into their third month on the road, Mitsuko finally tells Noriko that she’s sick. Well… not exactly. She can’t bring herself to exactly tell her what’s happening, but she can’t exactly tell her she’s fine anymore. Noriko isn’t a stupid girl by any means, so when Noriko asks Mitsuko if she’s fine when she’s still in bed at eleven in the morning trying to hide the fact she’s in absolute agony, she cracks and murmurs that she has a cold.

“Should we go to a doctor?” Noriko immediately asks. Something still doesn’t seem right, but she isn’t going to say anything further. Mitsuko not insisting she’s fine for once is a big thing, and she’d hate to push her and annoy her. She’ll tell her in her own time if there’s anything else wrong.

“I’ll see how I feel tomorrow,” she isn’t going to fall into a trap and promise anything. She really, really needs to tell her, but is so fucking hard and she knows she’s selfish, but it’s easier said than done to drop something like this on a person you love, especially when you’ve been keeping it a secret from them for over three months.

“Okay,” it’s enough for now, and again, she doesn’t want to push her. She just sits there, in the quiet, wondering what she can do, if anything, in the meantime.

After awhile, she gets up and slides on some shoes and a jacket, telling her she’ll go out and get them some cookies. They always make her feel better when she’s sick. Mitsuko gives her a small, tired nod, and lets her leave.

Noriko returns half an hour later with a pack of cookies from the local bakery, so fresh that they’re still slightly warm. When she sees that Mitsuko is asleep, she leaves her be, and sits on the edge of the bed, starting to eat one, the baked good feeling like some sort of warm hug.

Mitsuko doesn’t end up eating any of the cookies. She thanks her for them with as much strength as she can, and then promptly falls asleep again. She’s scared that she won’t wake up again, but staying awake is too hard and eating is too hard and everything is so fucking hard and she wants to break as many things as she possibly can and ask the universe what it’s fucking problem is for not even letting her keep this _one perfect, beautiful thing,_ but she can’t.

Noriko just sits next to her, hoping she’ll feel better soon. There’s something wrong, she can tell that, but she doesn’t know what to do. Mitsuko stops insisting that she’s fine, but doesn’t exactly say anything about getting better soon either.

 

After a week of them sitting in the motel and doing nothing, Mitsuko barely eating a thing and spending most of her time asleep, Noriko is scared. She even thinks about calling her father and asking him what to do even though he’d probably know as much as she does in this situation, but she refrains, and instead sits by her side, mumbling things about herself to the other girl, as she seems to be somewhat happier when she does.

On one of the rare times that Mitsuko manages to stay awake for more than fifteen minutes, Noriko decides to show her pictures from their trip so far, gently placing her head on her lap and getting her camera. She manages to pay attention for awhile, but then she can’t anymore and starts to close her eyes.

“Sorry, Noriko, but can we finish this later? I just want to sleep.”

Noriko nods. She takes out her notebook and instead begins to write about anything and everything to pass the hours, until the motel gets too quiet, and suddenly, she has no idea what to do whatsoever anymore.

 

It doesn’t take that long to find the hilltop that she and Mitsuko sat and watched the sunset at. She wanders for a bit, eventually giving in and trying to figure out where she is, and then decides to head there before figuring out what to do next. It’s early in the morning now, the sunset many hours away, but it feels like the right time. This was the perfect place when she and Mitsuko found it, and it’s still the right place now. She just wasn’t ready for it to end.

She takes in a deep breath and opens her bag, taking the urn out with careful fingers. Her stomach turns when she hears the clank of it colliding with the other one. _This wasn’t supposed to happen._

 _Why didn’t you tell me?_ If she did tell her, she knows she still would have fallen for her all the same, though. She would have had to have known. Things start to click into place now, but she wishes they didn’t. She’s angry, so angry, angrier than she thought she could ever be, but at the same time, she’s trying to understand.

“You’d know what to do, if you were here,” she opens the urn carefully, eyes closed tight. Her mother would have an answer. More than anything, she’d be here to hold her and let her know that it’ll all be fine, even though everything feels do awful, confusing and heartbreaking at the moment.

She lets the ashes fly out into the wind, and finally, after a long time, she cries over her mother. She misses her more than ever now. Her tears drip down onto her jeans and her sweater, and as she watches them all disappear, she feels as if a weight has been lifted off her chest. Her heart is still heavy from what has just happened, but she’s managed to sort something out and make a step in the right direction.

It’s not going to be like this forever.

She gets up once the ashes are gone and wipes her tears. With shaky hands, she punches in her father’s number for the first time since that night she left that note, a time that feels like centuries ago now, and when she hears his voice, she almost cries again.

Yes, she’s safe. Sorry she hasn’t called before. No, she’s not okay. No, she doesn’t need to be picked up. She’ll be home soon. There’s just some trips she must take alone, and she is grateful that he seems to understand that.

Noriko slings her bag over her shoulder and starts to walk away. She’s a long way from home and so much has happened since she climbed in Mitsuko’s car and changed everything for herself forever, but she’s going to be okay. It doesn’t feel like that at the moment, but it will be one day.

It’s time to go home.


End file.
